faulty fuel sensor - oh puleeze

"S." wrote:

the cost of scrubbing the launch must have been enormous.

The cost of launching and potentially losing the shuttle would have been
much, much greater, both in terms of dollars and a country's lost
confidence in the space program.

--
Peter
























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I enjoyed the initial post in the original thread, taking it in the
spirit of a moderately clever kind of aviation-related standup comedy
routine.

And certainly no one has any desire to see the current Shuttle program
be terminated at the cost of, or as the result above, one more set of
crew fatalities.

But the bottom line here is surely that the whole manned space flight
effort and focus at NASA not only should be terminated as fast as
possible, but should have been terminated several decades ago, for at
least two major reasons.

First of all, manned space flight at this point in time is just too
difficult, dangerous, and expensive to be worth pursuing. It's a matter
of the laws of physics versus the currently available or currently
foreseeable level of technology, not the competence or the culture of
NASA. Maybe some future breakthrough in technology will make manned
space flight a much more reasonable goal; maybe not.

But by far the more compelling reason is that there are really zero
useful things, much less compelling needs, that we can or might want to
accomplish in space that are not better done with unmanned rather than
manned missions.

Something like two-thirds of NASA's budget for the past several decades
has gone into manned space flight efforts. Yet, essentially ALL of the
useful scientific and technological accomplishments in space to date --
space probes, planetary missions, space observatories, communications
satellites, gps systems, earth and environmental observatories,
surveillance satellites -- have come totally from UNmanned satellites;
and essentially ZERO significant results have come from manned space
flights.

Think about it: If you go into any moderately well equipped research or
manufacturing facility of any kind in any field these days, you don't
find scientists and technicians standing there turning knobs, watching
meters, and writing results in lab notebooks. You find instead either
highly automated, computer-controlled instruments and sample
manipulation equipment, along with similar observation, measurement, or
manufacturing apparatus, sitting there taking data, manipulating
samples, or modifying things, in many cases 24/7, while feeding data and
results back to hard disks and computers outside the lab, with maybe
occasional reprogramming from a scientist or tech at a keyboard in their
office or elsewhere outside the lab.

If you want to measure or observe or do anything in space, you put the
measurement and observation hardware in space, and keep the scientists
and engineers in shirt-sleeve comfort and safety on the ground -- and
you do this not just as as a matter of cost and safety, although these
are compelling reasons, but also because the observational and recording
capabilities of hardware these days far exceed the observational
capabilities of humans in any case.

Finally, just for the record, none of the above is to say we should not
have done the Apollo Project as we did it when we did it. That was a
much different era; Apollo was a proud and admirable accomplishment; it
was worth doing.

But now that we've come to understand a lot better what we really can do
and want to do in space using unmanned missions, and how unbelievably
much more it costs and how little we can really accomplish with manned
missions, we've just got to get over this astronaut hero worship phase
and start using our space efforts and resources much more intelligently.

Finally, just for the record, none of the above is to say we should not
have done the Apollo Project as we did it when we did it. That was a
much different era; Apollo was a proud and admirable accomplishment; it
was worth doing.

Why?

Earlier on you said

First of all, manned space flight at this point in time is just too
difficult, dangerous, and expensive to be worth pursuing.

Well, it was even more difficult, dangerous, and expensive in the Apollo
days. Most of your post seems to be that we should wait until space
travel is easy, safe, and cheap before we pursue it. You complain that
manned space research isn't impersonal enough (comparing it with
manufacturing facilities on earth), but then you single out the Apollo
program as being "a proud and admirable accomplishment" that was "worth
doing".

What's the difference?

I would posit the opposite. Manned space travel isn't bold, daring, and
audacious enough to capture our imagination and inspire mankind to do
better than blow up people who hold the wrong opinions. The space
shuttle has been, as NASA wanted it to be, "just a truck". Using the
shuttle to replace rockets was an error given the lack of anything
better than chemical rocket engines to power it. Instead we should have
(and should now) use expendable rockets to put stuff into orbit, and a
space station based fleet of mini-shuttles to do stuff with them once
the heavy lifting is done. Another fleet of mini-shuttles would be used
to carry people up and down - they would be the size of a lear jet and
have enough payload capability for six people and little else.

But the focus of our space program should be going to Mars and onward.

Because it's there.

Jose
--
Nothing takes longer than a shortcut.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

"Jose" wrote in message
m...
better than chemical rocket engines to power it. Instead we should have
(and should now) use expendable rockets to put stuff into orbit, and a
space station based fleet of mini-shuttles to do stuff with them once the
heavy lifting is done. Another fleet of mini-shuttles would be used to
carry people up and down - they would be the size of a lear jet and have
enough payload capability for six people and little else.

But the focus of our space program should be going to Mars and onward.

Because it's there.

Jose

Funny you should say that. There is a company in Oklahoma that plans on
taking a stripped Lear 25 fuselage, bolting it to a basic wing, adding
turbofan engines and a re-useable rocket engine. Take-off and climb to
30,000 feet of the turbofans, light the rocket and climb to 158,000 feet,
then coast to about 330,000 feet before gliding back to earth. All in a half
hour flight. www.rocketplane.com

Allen

Another fleet of mini-shuttles would be used to
carry people up and down - they would be the size of a lear jet and have
enough payload capability for six people and little else.

Funny you should say that. There is a company in Oklahoma that plans on
taking a stripped Lear 25 fuselage, bolting it to a basic wing, adding
turbofan engines and a re-useable rocket engine. Take-off and climb to
30,000 feet of the turbofans, light the rocket and climb to 158,000 feet,
then coast to about 330,000 feet before gliding back to earth. All in a half
hour flight.

Perhaps I should have been clearer... "Another fleet of mini-shuttles
would be used to carry people up and down, and get them going five miles
per second to meet with other stuff up there."

Jose
--
Nothing takes longer than a shortcut.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

In article ,
Jose wrote:

[snip]
But the focus of our space program should be going to Mars and onward.

Because it's there.

Absolutely!!!

--
Bob Noel
no one likes an educated mule

AES wrote:

But the bottom line here is surely that the whole manned space flight
effort and focus at NASA not only should be terminated as fast as
possible, but should have been terminated several decades ago, for at
least two major reasons.

Well, at this point I think manned spaceflight needs to be saved *from*
NASA, not *by* it.

First of all, manned space flight at this point in time is just too
difficult, dangerous, and expensive to be worth pursuing. It's a matter
of the laws of physics versus the currently available or currently
foreseeable level of technology, not the competence or the culture of
NASA. Maybe some future breakthrough in technology will make manned
space flight a much more reasonable goal; maybe not.

"Future breakthrough[s] in technology" do not fall out of trees. Once
upon a time, flying at FL450 was "difficult, dangerous, and expensive."
But because we kept doing it, failing with often lethal results, it is
now as safe (or safer) as traveling on the ground.

But by far the more compelling reason is that there are really zero
useful things, much less compelling needs, that we can or might want to
accomplish in space that are not better done with unmanned rather than
manned missions.

Perhaps. This is where the argument turns from a matter of reason into
one more like faith. There is little that astronauts could do on the
surface of Mars that we cannot at this time do faster and more cheaply
with robots. BUT...

The challenge of sending a human crew to the surface of Mars, and
bringing it back to Earth intact, would I think serve to spur the
development of many things with more quotidian uses. With a mission
likely to last several years, one problem is healthcare. Many things
can happen, and even if you put a doctor on the crew you have to allow
(a) that he won't know everything and (b) he may get injured himself.
So, you need to provide alternatives: computerized monitors which can
observe the body and render diagnoses, and possibly devices which allow
people with less than an MD to provide meaningful care. Healthcare is
currently 15% of our economy, and growing without bounds. Surely such
research could have revolutionary impact on our lives.

The bureaucracy and legal/financial obstacles to developing such things
in the pure civilian world mean that advancements will come slowly at
best. In wartime, governments, businesses, and people are willing to
take all manner of chances because victory depends upon it. Even Stalin
gave up shooting his political opponents for a few years during WWII
when it was clear that the Nazis might roll them all over.

Similarly, the Apollo program provided an imperative of sufficient
power to justify innovation at all costs. Frontiers are, always have
been, and always will be dangerous places, but behind the pioneers come
settlers.

And then of course there is the point that man does not live by bread
alone. You concede that the Apollo program was the right thing to do at
the time, though it had little direct scientific merit. What about
today? Imagine the whole world, from Shanghai, to Tehran, to Paris, and
Los Angeles watching as an American backed down a ladder onto the
surface of Mars. Now imagine that the astronaut is a Muslim woman, who
came here as an immigrant to be educated in our great universities.
Laugh, shake your head, scream "PC!" or whatever, but don't tell me
this wouldn't cast an amazing shadow across the landscape.

-cwk.